1. Oddity came to my attention when a friend of Fernando gave the very intriguing endorsement that it was the first movie she’d seen to make her feel similar to how she felt watching The Ring.
2. I don’t know if anything has ever scared me as much as The Ring (but I was 11 years old at the time, and it’s difficult and will always be difficult to replicate that kind of Devastating-Horror-vs-Child-Brain alchemy), and although Oddity was not perfect, it made some moves I found to be really refreshing and admirable.
3. There is a lot about this movie that, on paper, I should probably find objectionable. The backdrops (cabin in the woods, old-timey asylum) are routine fare, the characterization in most cases is almost outrageously cliché (“I’m a doctor. Science and logic!” is a real line from the movie), and the fact that the psychic just straight up uses her psychic powers to solve the mystery off-screen during a meditation kinda seems like cheating.
4. And yet, none of that really bothered me. In fact, those things almost struck me as genre concessions, or even self-conscious deployment of cliché, so as not to divert energy from the true heart of the film.
5. Also, the more horror movies I see, (the more movies I see, the more art in general I see) the more I realize that originality of concept is, in fact, not the most important thing. How many original ideas can there possibly be for how to design the room of a haunted house?
6. What surprised and impressed me about Oddity, then, was not how they designed the rooms of their haunted house, but how they went about exploring and playing in them.
7. Which is to say, with a great deal of care, interest and attention.
8. And playfulness.
9. Which is not a given! Sometimes the setup of a movie sounds so good, so juicy, so fresh and new, and then you watch it and it feels like eating wooden prop food! And then you become very confused about what it actually means for a movie to be good, and it all suddenly seems so pointless and impossible. And it can really put you in a bad mood!
10. What shined in this movie was, for me, the unmistakeable sense that the folks who made it were genuinely interested in such things as:
- Tension
- Naturalism
- Lie-detecting
- Totem
- Aesthetics of space and object
11. And although the fruits of the exploration itself didn’t necessarily change my life, I don’t think it has to. What I want when I watch a movie (or consume any piece of art) is to feel that the artist is trustworthy, intentional, and sincere. I want to feel the labor and care (ultimately, craftsmanship) reflect the intensity of their obsession.
12. George Saunders and Mary Karr (and probably other people too) talk about the importance of making art with the kinds of materials/tools/systems about which you are most passionate/obsessed, and that give you the most pleasure to work with. Among other things, the way these most beloved elements (which are unique, like an artist’s fingerprint) invite play and spontaneity from the artist prevents the project from becoming too tightly controlled, premeditated or canned, and allows for more natural access to the kind of overgrown, rusted side-door of truth.
13. Some online critics chastise Oddity for its simplicity, and it’s true that it’s not very complicated. The twist, for example, would probably be too straightforward for a Hitchcock movie, and seemed more like the kind of thing you’d find in a fairy tale. But for me, this winnowing down of focus gave the filmmakers space to pour a lot of care into the natural magnets to their attention, as such:
14. Obsession #1: Pacing and naturalism. The naturalism of stage time, naturalism of dialogue, the way it drags, meanders and repeats itself, all felt like intentional investigations into the real lived experience of interpersonal tension and dread. For example: most movies would have made that opening scene about half as long as it was, if not shorter. And importantly, there is nothing concrete that occurred in that scene that you wouldn’t have already deduced from the abridged version in the trailer. And yet, sometimes more is more. It didn’t have to be that long to communicate the salient details, but it did need to be that long to make me want to throw up. And that, my friends, is the whole point of watching a movie!
15. Obsession #2: How can you tell if someone is trustworthy? If slow pacing/naturalism were the techniques used here, then the question of trustworthiness (and specifically, of detecting in real time if someone is telling the truth) was the raw material on which this technique was applied. This obviously occurs most prominently in the first scene, but it also happens in several other very prolonged interactions (e.g. between the husband and the psychic, between the psychic and the new girlfriend), and every time, I found myself embedded in a game of brutal self-assessment, a kind of pop quiz in people-reading and street smarts. How can you tell? Would I be able to tell? It began to feel that the stakes were not just for the character’s safety, but for my own sense of safety. And, of course, every time I thought I knew the answer, the movie would force me to stare at it for longer and, just like in a real quiz, I would have no choice but to second guess my answer.
16. Obsession #3: Love of Objects. I found myself comparing how this movie handled the concept of haunted objects to some of the Blumhouse movies that frequently deal in the same (The Conjuring, Annabelle, etc.). To me, there was a palpable difference. The call bell was about on par with a Blumhouse curio (spooky, but also fairly predictable, which strikes me as the sign of someone only superficially interested. Like, the middle-of-the-road, lowest-common-denominator, doesn’t-want-to-be-too-challenged-or-faced-with-anything-too-unfamiliar horror fan who doesn’t really “get it”, you know? Heh-heh). But hot damn, when they carted out that fucking wooden golem! And then when they went so far as to show you every tiny object inside the bowling-ball-holes of its head, removed one-by-one in painstaking real time…to me, that felt different. Once again, I was ready to yarf at any moment. What stands out to me as the defining difference here is the patience, the lack of subsequent explanation, and the ambitious weirdness of the whole thing. It all speaks to a kind of “forgetting the audience” on the part of the filmmakers, and this signals to me that what I am seeing is merely the artifact of what was truly, at its heart, first and foremost a dialogue between art and artist. And that gives me faith in the sincerity of the project.
17. And ultimately, intuitively, we all know that a haunted doll is something any basic bitch could come up with, but a bewitched, life-size wooden carving of a shrieking man with tiny skull compartments shows, frankly, a bit more love of the game.
18. Obsession #4: Aesthetic Vision. I had mentioned above that the backdrops (the cabin, the psych ward) were standard, perhaps somewhat tropey horror fare. But again – is lack of originality necessarily the same thing as trope? Grumpy Old Man Robert McKee talks about how cliché is not defined by unoriginality, but by the superficiality of how it was researched. In other words, when the depiction of the thing is derived from how other movies and media depict it, rather than how it occurs in real life, it settles into the familiar shapes of cliché we all instinctively know so well. The hospital and halfway house spaces in Oddity were not especially elaborate, but having spent some time in these kinds of spaces myself, I was struck by subtle, distinctive notes of accuracy. Certain details (the colored trimming on the doorways, the crosshatched windows, the filtered light) really took me back to those places in my memory. And to even go through the trouble of putting together the slightly different set of a halfway house, rather than just have that scene take place in the psych ward, showed a surprising attention to detail. And maybe it’s because I just got through telling you all the reasons this movie kicks ass (and frankly, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad reason – virtue begets virtue), but these scenes struck me as achieving a very elegant balance between accuracy and aesthetic beauty. Along similar lines, the cabin in the woods was not just any cabin in the woods; it was a weird space like a big open fort, opulent, with lots of mezzanines, very tall ceilings, very cold and uncozy. This is all to say, they took exactly what they wanted from the cabin prototype (the unique sense of isolation), scrapped the rest, and added their own details, the things they thought would be frightening, fit the characters, and make sense in the story. The energy and intentionality in these decisions, again, gives me faith in the artist.
19. I also have to point out – the natural aesthetic / thematic harmony between medicine and curio was something I’d forgotten, and which gives me much joy. Such a reminder to better cherish the inherent weirdness of working in the medical space, its frequent proximity to something quite like the occult, the mystery of the body and of life and death, and the austere strangeness of human institutions.
20. The only thing I hated was when Dani hides in the tent. Dumb, lame, not believable.